Buffy 20
by aims80
Summary: Bssed on Buffy but set in 2013. Proper blurb coming soon.


_[Author's note: In cleaning the other week I found this chapter I'd written a couple of years ago. I haven't wrote any fan fiction for a long time because I've been concentrating on my original stories instead but ironically flicking through the channels on TV tonight the movie of "Buffy and the Vampire Slayer" was playing and it got me thinking about how much I loved the TV show and "Angel." I suddenly had the idea for a fan-fic based on Buffy and because I'd seen this chapter recently I decided to use this chapter and work it into my new idea. Hence Buffy 2.0. _

_Though this is a Buffy fan-fic it's very loosely based on the show and the characters are, for the most part, my own.]_

**BUFFY 2.0.**

"_**I**__nto every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer."_

**Preface.**

**Egypt, 1791.**

"**I**'m in!" The first man said. He had the sort of accent that was found in upper-class British homes but so out of place in the slums of India where the second man had found him. He'd been a scholar for years but, after the death of his wife and daughter in childbirth, he'd succumbed to drink and lost everything. From there he travelled the world, working his way on merchant ships or any job he could find to earn money, and lived amongst the rabble of the dockyards or less than salubrious parts of cities around the globe. He'd been robbed and assaulted more times than he could remember but he didn't care. His will to live, his desire to live, had drained away the moment his wife and daughter passed away. In truth he was a coward: he wanted to die, but he did not have the courage to do it himself. So now he was simply whiling the time away until he died. Little did he know the time was closer than he would ever have anticipated.

The second man, who had been standing back in the shadows away from the light the flaming torches they'd carried in, stepped forwards eagerly. He leant over the first man's shoulder.

"You're in my light." The first man reprimanded.

The second man, with restraint, stepped back a few paces. "Is this sufficient?" He asked. His accent was harder to place; a mixture of Spanish, French, English, Italian, and many more thrown in.

The first man nodded brusquely and, using the iron bar for leverage, he worked his way around the edges of the lid and then, with a grunt of exertion he pushed the lid aside. His thick grey hair fell in his face and he pushed it aside impatiently. The lid fell to the stone floor and shattered but he didn't care. Neither man did. Because the treasure was what was inside.

"Hand me the torch for a moment." The first man ordered.

"I'm sorry but you must be labouring under the misrepresentation that you are the boss here." The second man said.

"Eduardo, please hand me the torch." The first man said.

"As you wish Lucas." The second man said, with a sarcastic little bow.

As Lucas took the torch from Eduardo his fingers came into contact with Eduardo's and he recoiled slightly for the man's skin was ice-cold. Even after the hike into the middle of the hill, much of which had been uphill. Lucas had gone slowly, a little unsure of himself, and a little shaky from his regular drinking habit. He'd sensed Eduardo's impatience the whole time but he did not want to break his neck before this was done- despite his desire to die- because of the large sum of drinking money he would secure as payment for his help on this little expedition and his expertise.

It had taken them almost two hours to reach the tomb. Eduardo had told him that it had taken him and his men three weeks to break down the thick stone barriers that were placed at various intervals towards the tomb. Lucas had, upon arriving, looked around with the torch. "Where are the treasures? The treasure you promised me would be buried here? That I would get a share in?" He'd demanded of Eduardo, uncaring of the other man's temper for the moment.

"This man isn't a king. He's just a man. A wealthy man, granted, but just a man. He's buried with the treasure." Eduardo had explained. He had not hesitated which told Lucas it was not a lie.

Holding the torch a little back Lucas studied the outside of the coffin. It was clay, he thought, with many markings etched into the side and there were paintings in gold, red and blue, faded though they were with so many years lying here in the darkness. Behind him Eduardo paced, back and forth, his gait tight. It distracted Lucas but in the few months he'd known Eduardo Lucas had worked out very quickly that he had a fearsome temper so he bit back any sharp complaint and swept his eyes over the hieroglyphics.

"Can you read it?" Eduardo demanded, suddenly at Lucas's shoulder again, with a speed that belied his size.

"Some of it." Lucas said. "This here means he was married with a son. And this is his family motto. It means courage of the lion and strength of the bear."

"What sort of motto is that?" Eduardo scoffed.

Lucas shrugged.

"And inside." Eduardo said.

Lucas moved the torch to the side a little, his breath quickening. He was deeply ashamed of the fact his heart wasn't beating so abnormally fast because of the distasteful fact he had opened up an ancient coffin and was staring down at a mummified corpse but because of the fact that this heralded great treasures. His eyes avoided looking towards the mummy's face. Instead he reached down and pulled aside the shroud which did not cover the mummy so much as the mummy's treasures. The shroud came apart the second his fingers came into contact with it, fragments floating away like dust. But underneath it was what Lucas wanted to see.

There were diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphire, gold and silver. No wonder Eduardo had wanted to see this so much. For a man who was not a King, not a prince, not even a nobleman this treasure was probably worth more than some of the pieces King George III back home in England owned!

Lucas ran his fingers over some of the precious jewels, slowly, reverently. "Your treasures, Eduardo." He said, standing up with a groan and a crack from his knees, to allow the other man to get closer to his treasure.

Eduardo bent down but, to Lucas's surprise, his gaze bypassed the treasures and instead he gently plucked a piece of parchment that was tucked down the side from the coffin and unfolded it. Lucas noted he did all this without touching anywhere on the coffin at all. He had not taken Eduardo- a man who looked like he had lived many lifetimes in his twenty-something years due to the hardness in his face and body- to be squeamish but perhaps he had misread him.

"You did promise me you can read Latin, did you not Lucas? I pray you would not lie to me." Eduardo asked, standing up again.

"I did not lie. I would not lie." Lucas said, a little affronted. This despite the fact that living with the dregs of society throughout the globe, being a drunk and a gambler, had taught him to be a rogue and a liar.

"Then read." Eduardo said. He held the parchment out but as Lucas went to take it from he moved it back, just out of the other man's reach. "Be. Careful. If this breaks _before_ you translate it I will break _you_."

Lucas shivered. He did not doubt it.

"And then we are done? We take the treasures in these sacks and leave? And when we are back in Cairo you give me my money and we go our separate ways?" Lucas asked.

"Indeed. We do not want to spend any longer in this tomb than we have. I hate the smell of death." Eduardo replied.

Lucas wisely refrained from asking whether Eduardo had smelt the smell of death many times in his life before and took the parchment. There were parts of the parchment that were faded and he had to squint to read everything.

Eduardo began to pace again.

"This is...I don't understand...it's so strange." Lucas mused.

Eduardo was suddenly at his shoulder. "What?" He demanded, his voice harsh.

"I'm just confused. Reading this...I don't...it makes no sense. Why would this be in a coffin?' Lucas said.

"Lucas, I hope you are not playing games with me. Just read it. Let me worry about what it means. You do not think I brought you here for your physical strength surely." Eduardo said, mild amusement evident beneath his anger.

"You knew it was here? How did you-" Lucas began.

"I suspected. It does not matter. Read." Eduardo snapped.

Lucas cleared his throat. "In the one thousand, nine hundredth, and ninety-sixth year of our Lord she will be born. In the year of two thousand and thirteenth of our Lord she will die. The last of the long line. And with her death the apocalypse shall begin. She will be found in the land of the sun." He read.

"Are you sure that is what it says?" Eduardo demanded.

"Completely. I told you it made no sense." Lucas replied. He shivered in the damp of the tomb. "I don't feel comfortable here Eduardo. Can we get the treasure and go please?"

"Oh I can go. You however will be going somewhere very, very different." Eduardo said.

Lucas suddenly felt very scared. And just as his mind was pondering the strange thing that had suddenly popped into his head, of how a parchment written in Latin had found its way into the bricked up and sealed tomb of an Egyptian man buried in a time where the written word was far cruder than its current incarnation and even the beginnings of Latin, his mind stopped working. Because Eduardo, at the speed of light, was upon him. With his bare hands he practically threw Lucas up against the stone wall of the tomb and then, with one quick movement, with what seemed like no effort whatsoever, he broke Lucas's neck. And then he lowered his mouth down onto the dead man's neck, his long teeth pierced the skin, and he drank from him, draining his blood. When he was done he tossed Lucas's limp body aside like a rag doll, pocketed the parchment, stuffed the treasures into the burlap sacks they had brought in with them, and left.

**Chapter One.**


End file.
